


Looking Glass

by jokocraft



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Body Swap, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jokocraft/pseuds/jokocraft
Summary: These were his eyes and his lips. His hands, his bones.
Relationships: Ferdinand von Aegir/Hubert von Vestra
Comments: 6
Kudos: 61





	Looking Glass

**Author's Note:**

> Not long before their B support.

Hubert fell into bed rather dramatically.

He questioned this, considering he did not normally fall into beds with any drama. Had Ferdinand’s body compelled him, like an instinct? Or was his subconscious mind already acting on the presumptions of what Ferdinand might do?

Hubert neither knew nor particularly cared to know. He was still irritated about the cause of it all, the spell whose ill effects to which he and Ferdinand had been subjected—not that it was really spell at all, but an unstable amalgamation of Faith and Reason that had backfired right around the moment Ferdinand came into his office. Unannounced, yet again.

Linhardt guessed it would be at least twelve hours before the repercussions of such a “spectacular” failure wore off.

Hubert sat up and stared into the grandiose mirror hanging above Ferdinand’s dresser. (They agreed simply switching rooms as well was the lesser of evils, and Hubert found himself trusting Ferdinand these days. Sans proper knocking.) He hadn’t realized how many mirrors decorated the palace until it wasn’t his reflection he was seeing. Here he was again, looking into impossibly light, bright amber eyes. As if Ferdinand were on the other side of the glass staring right back at him with an uneasy look.

Hubert made Ferdinand’s expression thoughtful instead. He raised his eyebrows and Ferdinand’s did too, a similar look to when Hubert said something that surprised him. When Hubert tilted his head, orange bangs slid into his face, so he tucked them back—pausing just after doing so. He frowned, and so Ferdinand frowned.

Hubert unnecessarily brushed his bangs back again, this time letting his fingers linger. Then he slid his hand through the thick of Ferdinand’s hair, nearer the scalp. He reluctantly accepted that _silky_ was not an unreasonable term to use in regards to hair after all.

This is ridiculous, he thought of saying, just to hear it in Ferdinand’s voice. Instead, he stood from Ferdinand’s bed and approached the dresser and mirror. He had never looked at Ferdinand thoroughly before, but now he took a bit of a pointless interest in examining his features: strong but not hard, masculine but not rugged. Eyebrows a little too perfect. Eyelashes lighter and longer than expected.

Hubert let out a breath, but it sounded like Ferdinand’s letting out of a breath, and his heart twinged uncomfortably.

It wasn’t difficult for Hubert to envision himself as Ferdinand, standing by his dresser, sighing at this own reflection. Not even an unlikely scenario. Hubert combed a hand through long hair again, vainly, as he imagined Ferdinand might. At some point between one blink and another, his eyes lowered half mast. Ferdinand’s mouth parted, head tilted.

Hubert stiffened and licked dry lips, which did nothing to stop the sinking feeling in his gut. Any move he made, any twitch, he was overly aware of it. This was the body Ferdinand lived with everyday. These were his eyes and his lips. His hands, his bones.

Hubert kept glancing back into Ferdinand’s eyes until he forced himself to stop. There was…still work to be done, but he had forgotten to bring along additional work from his own quarters to occupy himself for the night. He had been understandably distracted by the idea of not needing to bring things like clothes or a pillow. He would use Ferdinand’s clothes, pillow, sheets. They had agreed. Lesser of evils, and all that. The idea of Ferdinand putting his obnoxious clothes on Hubert’s body was absurd, and the idea of Hubert even attempting to fit his clothes on Ferdinand’s body was…

Even more absurd, absolutely.

Leaning his back against the dresser, Hubert let out a greater sigh and almost immediately winced, because it was exactly what Ferdinand sounded like when he was irrationally annoyed about something.

Hubert took solace in the fact that Ferdinand’s body functioned on a normal sleeping schedule, so he’d likely be able to sleep through the night. He just needed to wait a bit, read a book perhaps, and then embrace oblivion. Tomorrow this would all be over. After all, Linhardt was always most accurate when he tried least to be.

But he could not do any of that before suffering the greatest evil in this whole debacle: a bath. Hubert cursed Ferdinand for his morning ride and afternoon training and stable maintenance and whatever else Ferdinand did all day to prove himself to every human, cat, and dog at the monastery.

Better to get it over with as soon as possible. Hubert strode down the hall towards the west wing baths with purpose, feeling very Ferdinand-like and hating every second, really, and grabbed a towel from the clean stacks with menace. Except, it wasn’t really menace if it was Ferdinand, was it? It was brattishness, which Hubert had been certain until this very moment was very different.

He plowed ahead, making a point to feel as bored and disgruntled as possible as he undressed, staring at the white tile surrounding one of the impressive palace tubs. Bodies were just bodies, each different, all ultimately banal. This one just so happened to be Ferdinand’s, but Hubert wasn’t thinking about that.

Too dignified to do otherwise and not keen on being chewed out, Hubert did Ferdinand the honor of nicely folding his clothes on the small bench on far side of the generously-sized private room. He was promptly punished in doing so, however, by inevitably glimpsing Ferdinand’s naked chest when he looked down, which meant inevitably glancing at Ferdinand’s abdomen, and hips, and everything lower.

Because he was a sighted human, and because Ferdinand was as pleasingly built as Adrestian men could get, Hubert could not look away at first. He absently gave Ferdinand credit for doing so well by his body, keeping it in such good shape—or good health, rather. Great health. It was interesting, he noted just as absently, that Ferdinand was not quite as small where one who knew him might expect him to be.

Hubert clenched his jaw and looked at the ceiling.

*

Ferdinand had been avoiding mirrors, but he still caught his reflection in the window around dusk. Seeing Hubert made him jump slightly, but upon recognizing how silly such a thing was, he smiled to himself. Saw Hubert smile to himself, looking right into Ferdinand’s eyes with genuinely happy mirth.

The sight was ineffable, Ferdinand took a step back, and Hubert’s mirth was gone.

He pushed dark bangs back and watched Hubert’s eyes blink twice, unimpeded. As expected, Ferdinand determined, though his heartbeat disagreed. He had always expected Hubert to look this handsome. He wasn’t so stupid as to think Hubert wasn’t very attractive, in his own way.

Ferdinand turned away from the window and tried to make sense of the the sudden urgency stirring in him. Like he should do something, except he didn’t know what.

Only when his heart calmed did Ferdinand make himself face his pale reflection again. Hubert’s expression was too vulnerable, and so Ferdinand did what Hubert would want and rearranged his bangs back into place.

*

Hubert’s bath was mostly uneventful.

A half erection emerged when he washed his legs—shorter, sturdier, with oddly elegant ankles—but it went steadfastly ignored. In return, it steadfastly ignored even the most aggressively sexless of Hubert’s thoughts. There was nothing to do but continue on, quickly and efficiently rubbing down his torso until he found another another problem hiding in plain sight, in the shape of rather thick breasts which Hubert found quite soft, and his mind emptied completely.

Hubert sat motionless, only the sound of dripping disturbing the quiet. Amber eyes slipped closed. Long hair cooled, sticking to his neck and face. He smoothed a palm over Ferdinand’s breast more slowly, and a wave of arousal momentarily submerged him.

Was it himself reacting, Hubert wondered, or was it Ferdinand’s body? He mulled this over…

His own nipples had never been very sensitive, but pressing a thumb over Ferdinand’s left one made his thighs involuntarily tremble in the water. Hubert bit his lip, wet them, and considered what he must look like right now, what Ferdinand looked like touching himself in the bath, breathless. Pearls of water stuck to his lashes and sliding down his cheekbones, curling under his jaw.

His back arched, which surely was the body’s instincts compelling Hubert this time. Not that he minded. But he couldn’t let them compel him anything further. He too was a grown man, and he had enough sense left to know that.

So despite the ache demanding attention, he forced himself to go still. Denied the body’s instincts to touch more, press its thighs together, buck its hips just once. Hubert concentrated on breathing, remembered this would all end soon, and resumed his original purpose.

*

For Ferdinand, the night crawled by. Hubert’s body had no desire to sleep. His own mind agonized over what Hubert was doing, seeing, in his own body. Sure, he had insisted Hubert get clean, but would he find it lacking in the process? Or would he…

Silly. This all was such a farce, truly. Ferdinand dismissed these thoughts as he lay on his back, staring up at Hubert’s bare hands in the meager light.

He hadn’t taken off anything but Hubert’s gloves. One withering look, cast by his own face no less, was enough for Ferdinand to know better. Not that Ferdinand had intended to do otherwise in the first place; Hubert could survive a few days without changing, and certainly he’d done it before.

But Hubert’s gloves. Ferdinand drew the line at neglecting basic hygiene. When he took them off to wash Hubert’s quite long, quite nimble hands, Ferdinand nearly had a heart attack at the state of the skin—until he remembered his studies from class on the effects of magic overuse. How appropriate, Ferdinand had thought, swallowing back bile. Hubert really knew no limits in his work.

Ferdinand stared sleeplessly at Hubert’s hands for hours. The black-veined fingers did not ache, exactly, but their ability to feel texture and temperature was little better with the gloves off than on. Ferdinand sifted through descriptor after descriptor, should he ever meaningfully comment on them in the future. A bit terrifying. Not really, unless they were temporarily your own hands.

Tainted? No, haunting.

Telling. Or, more mysterious than telling.

Alluring—no, no, no. Unique. Hubert.

Very Hubert. Indeed.

Ferdinand’s thoughts muddled when drowsiness finally encroached, and somehow they came to form the idea of bringing one hand up to the side of his face. As lightly as he could, Ferdinand trailed Hubert’s knuckles over his cheek. Traced a whisper of a touch that seemed like…him.

Sinking into oblivion, he lost awareness of his body, his mind, his self. But as he traveled—

As he arrived on the other side, the echo of a careful hand remained with him.


End file.
